Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of death from cancer in the USA (Yokota, Carcinogenesis; 121, 497-503; 2000). The high mortality associated with colorectal cancer is related to its ability to spread beyond the large intestine and invade distant organs. Therefore, increasing efforts are being focused on developing more effective screening for colon cancer invasion and metastatic markers (Saha et al, Science, 294, 1343-1346; 2001; Buckhaults et al., Cancer Res., 61, 6996-7001; 2001), based on differences in protein expression between normal colonic and cancer tissue. Several proteins which are upregulated in colon cancer have been shown to increase the metastatic potential. However, an understudied area is changes in cellular glycosphingolipid (GSL) production, which are known to accompany the transformation of colon cancer cells into metastatic cells. GSL are the major structural components of the cell membrane. They are also important functional components of lipid rafts (LR) and are involved in many cell signaling pathways (Anderson and Jacobson, Science, 296, 1821-1825; 2002). GSL change dramatically in quantity and quality during cell differentiation or malignant transformation (Hakomori and Kannagi, J. Natl. Cancer Inst., 71, 21-34; 1983: Hakomori, Cancer Res., 56, 5309-5318; 1996). Abberant glycosylation occurs essentially in all types of cancers and some aberrant glycosylation is a result of initial oncogenic transformation, as well as a key event in induction of invasion and metastasis (Hakomori, Adv Cancer Res., 52, 257-331; 1989, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 99, 10231-10233; 2002). For example, it is well established that GM3 inhibits cell motility and invasiveness in bladder tumor (awamura et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 99, 10718-23; 2001). Ganglioside Gt1b, GD1A and GM1 inhibit cell proliferation and epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine phosphorylation (Mirkin et al, Cell Prolif., 35, 105-115; 2002). However, a different GSL Gb5 strongly enhances motility in experiments with breast cancer cells (Hakomori, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 99, 10231-10233; 2002). Recently enhanced expression of the ganglioside-specific sialidase “Neu3” was reported in colorectal cancer (Kakugawa et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 99, 10718-23; 2002), indicating that GSL function in tumor progression may have been underestimated.